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Day 43

I’ve not had much time for gaming this week but played through the rest of Tangled Tales yesterday. In theory the quests were supposed to get harder but I’d got the hang of how they work after the first so they really didn’t take long to play through. There are things I didn’t accomplish in the game, however, so it would still have some replay value if I ever went back to it. I’m not going to attempt to include solutions to all the puzzles here as there are just too many. On the whole they are all pretty easy and don’t take much figuring out.

I started off exploring the new world map. The first place I ran into was a farm, home to the farmer who had called me out to cure the drought. There wasn’t much to do here, but the farmers son was really keen on seeing the circus and giving him some tickets I picked up in the last world gained me a key to the barn.

In the barn was a locked up pirate, but I’d no way to free him at this stage. To free this guy you have to recruit the Bruce Lee lookalike from the local monestary who karate chops the post and he then joins your party.

The farmer told me all about the drought and of course wants me to sort it out for him. Otherwise he doesn’t offer much help.

Back outside, a man called Charles is wandering around the world map looking for his other half Veronica. Unfortunately he doesn’t join my party or anything that helpful. I run into a collection of motley characters around the map who do join up however so I soon have a decent size party again.

With my party in place, I go back to free the pirate who asks to be taken to his ship.

Once there, we sail off and he steals all our gold and dumps us all on a desert island.

There is a tiny little dungon on the island with what appears to be a fountain of youth at one end of it. I can’t find anything to do here yet though. I search round the island and found a conch shell. Blowing this a turtle turns up and takes us all back to the beach on the main map again.

Back on the main map I run into an aged warrior who joins my party. This looks like a sure candidate for the fountain if I ever saw one.

Sure enough a walk and a blow of a conchshell later he drinks from the fountain and is back in his 20’s again.

Back on the beach again, when I walk on a certain tile Gnu Gnu (one of the odder party members) wants to build a sand castle. While hes doing this he unearths a bottle.

Opening the bottle I get sucked inside and meet a sleeping djinni. Dropping a rotten egg wakes him up for some reason and he joins the party. When we then run into the imp on a flying carpet he beats him up and I get the carpet.

Riding the carpet whisks me off to a castle in the clouds.

Inside is a very very large giant, who locks us all up the moment I walk in the door. There isn’t much in the cell but pulling a string rings a bell and a loaf of bread comes through the door. Eating this, I find a key inside which gets me out of the cell. Searching round the castle I find a storybook and not much else.

Back on the ground, reading the book to a Dragon who’s been blocking a dungeon makes it fall asleep and I sneak past to get a new spell.

One of my new spells in the Recall spell which makes you travel to either a thimble or feather you previously dropped. I haven’t had the thimble yet though so this time it takes me to a whole new map of a cemetary. I explore this but soon run out of things to do and have to retread old ground.

It turns out, I’d missed a room up in the giants castle. I find Veronica and take her back to Charles getting a book of poetry in the process.

Heading back to the giant and reading him the book of poetry, he starts to cry and the drought is cured.

The farmer isn’t all that thankful but its another quest done.

Eldritch gives me another stats boost and a new quest to strengthen the three portals. This requires casting a spell (which I don’t know) on each of them. I can apparently get the spell from the wizard enclave which is in a new valley.

The new valley seems fairly small with not all that much in it. There is a troll who won’t let me over her bridge.

Theres a fairly obvious Elmer Fudd type rabbit hunter wandering around. One of the puzzles in this area is to walk into three rabbit traps, setting them off and I then get given a carrot by a bunny. I do find one person who will join my party here and he gets left behind with the troll while I sneak over the bridge.

On the other side of the bridge is a cave, a quick trek through that and I’m in a new icy map with snow everywhere. Its a really tiny little map with not that much to do. There is an igloo with an eskimo inside. He lets me borrow his canoe and I paddle that out to an iceberg with a penguin on it. I give him a bow tie I bought earlier and he tells me to build a snowman north of the igloo.

I build my snowman and he comes to life and joins my party. This lets me get past some snowball throwing imps and find another party member Azersun on the other side.

For some reason Azersun talks like the giant rooster character from those old Warner Brothers cartoons. He also has the ability to take us back in time. It turns out that the Wizard enclave I’ve been looking for doesn’t exist in this time zone. I still can’t get into it though because of a twisty maze I can’t get through.

I run into Charles from the last world. It turns out he is a werewolf and wants me to lift the curse. The Indian who cursed him wants his diploma back before he will lift this curse. This is in the hands of a female leprechaun who wants a pot of gold before I can get it.

The gold is in a pyramid in the past. The present day pyramid is in ruins but going back in time and working through it like any dungeon I eventually get the gold at the end. This triggers the destruction of the pyramid with a minor homage to the Ultima 4 death sequence.

I run round returning items to all the appropriate people and Charles is cured. As luck would have it he hands me a map to the maze to get to the wizards enclave.

The enclave turns out to be a series of tests like the one above, where I have to demostrate my powers/knowledge to get into the next room. This is just a case of knowing the right spells and such – I wasn’t missing any so sailed through this. At the far end is a library with two books containing all the continous and non continuous spells. I already had them all except the energise portal one. I walk to the 3 portals in the 3 valleys, cast this new spell, then walk back to Eldritch.

I walk back to Eldritch and thats the end of the game. He raises my stats again for no obvious reason and just as its about to cut into the end animation the game crashes. This is a problem with the copy protection I think. The endgame has its own executable and the copy protection avoidance doesn’t work on it! I’m a little peeved to get all the way to the end and not see the end sequence – about the only way around this would be to set up an old PC with a 5.25 drive. I’ve got all the bits knocking around so I may do this sometime. It won’t help me with screenshots here though.

Regarding the game itself, I enjoyed it while it lasted. The puzzles are pretty silly at times and if the party members didn’t all but tell you the answers they could get frustrating. The difficulty level is very low so this was never a problem and I wouldn’t have minded if the game had been longer. If you regard this game as more of an adventure game and put it up against the Sierra games from the same year, i.e. Space Quest 3, Quest For Glory 1, etc.. then it falls well short but at least its entertaining which is a relief after Knights Of Legend.